


those all-american summertime blues

by jollypuppet



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Beaches, Fluff, M/M, Romance, basically steve's a lifeguard and bucky's a bartender holla
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 17:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1519088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jollypuppet/pseuds/jollypuppet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s one person working. And he’s wearing sunglasses. Even though there’s plenty of shade in the shack.</p><p>“Oh, boy.” Steve says under his breath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	those all-american summertime blues

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, today [Winter](sebastianstankissingboys.tumblr.com) reblogged a photoset of Sebastian Stan in shorts and sandals and I went off about sassy bartender!Bucky and heart of gold lifeguard!Steve and that's how this happened, I don't know.
> 
> So here's some beach stuff! And the reference #SELFIE by The Chainsmokers is purely coincidental because I heard it today!

Life in Brooklyn, for better or worse, felt like a constant spectrum of blues and grays and muted, rainy days that bled into each other in a way that was poetic, if not downright depressing. It lent itself very easily as a model for architectural sketches, stretching its buildings and structures into the air like it was about to yawn, but wasn’t the best home for breeding happiness. Steve remembers long, cold nights in his tiny apartment there, watching the city lights as they never ceased to burn through the darkness, listened to the constant bustle. It tried its best to be home, and to Steve, it was for a good two decades and some.

He wonders why the skyline in California has so many more colors. Maybe it doesn’t, maybe he just never noticed in New York, but the light seems brighter, harsher. The hues are more vibrant. He wishes he thought to bring his sketchpad.

“Hey, rookie.”   
  
Steve tears his eyes away from the shades of blue (turquoise, cerulean, navy, electric) in the water to look down at the sand, where Natasha’s standing with her big, sparkly sunglasses pushes up into her hair. Her towel is laying on the sand not far from the lifeguard chair, barely disturbed.

“You keep daydreaming like that, and somebody’s gonna end up drowning.” Nat tells him with a hint of dry humor in her voice, and after working a couple of weeks with her, he’s getting used to the way she tells jokes. “I asked you if you wanted something from the bar. I need a daiquiri, like,  _stat_.”

Steve frowns. “You’re gonna drink on the job?”  
  
She looks at him the way parents look at their kids when they say something that’s equally cute and stupid, and brushes at a patch of sand on her elbow. “It’s SoBe, Steve, don’t get your trunks in a twist. Do you want anything or not? They’ve got those cute old-fashioned orange soda bottles, you’d probably like those.”

“I’m good, but thanks.” he tells her, and she shrugs, giving him a little wave as she walks away towards the (tacky, in Steve’s opinion) tiki bar where the beach leads into wooden boards before spilling out onto the blacktop backyard of Howard Stark’s towering hotel legacy. She passes by Clint, who’s occupied with apathetically refereeing a game of volleyball between some spunky college girls, and she fist bumps him as she goes by.

Steve smiles a little bit, because for a ragtag group people in their late 20s with CPR certification and thin wallets, they do pretty good policing that beach. A little girl runs up to the bottom of Steve’s lifeguard chair, sand covering her feet and legs and one half-deflated flotation wing on her right arm.

“Mr. Lifeguard!” she yells up to him. “I lost my floaty! Can you help me find it?”

He grins at her. “Sure, I’d love to.”

\--

Maybe a week later, Steve isn’t the newbie anymore. He’s taken perch on the lifeguard chair while Natasha sunbathes below him, and they both watch the new guy (he said his name is Thor, so he might be foreign?) as he mingles with some of the beach patrons and tries his best to make some friends.

“He’s like if solid gold was a person.” Natasha mumbles. Thor’s drawing something of a crowd comprised of bikini-clad girls and beach body builders alike, and they all seem to be taking to him with ease. “Oh, I know one those girls. See the blonde one in the sun hat? Her name’s Chelsea, she’s super sweet.”

“There goes my spot as Stark Resort & Beach’s newest heartthrob.” Steve says without animosity, and looks back to his book, which he feels like hasn’t actually read in at least half an hour. “I bumped into him in one of the hotel’s locker rooms, he’s pretty genuine, from what I can tell. Clapped me on the back really hard.”  
  
Natasha snorts. “You’re such an old man sometimes, Rogers.”

Steve’s about to say something to defend himself when he hears a rapping coming from the opposite side of the lifeguard chair, and he looks down to see Sam Wilson grinning up at him with a pair of aviators sitting on his nose. “Did I hear something about you acting all old again, Steve?”  
  
“You came just at the right time, Sam.” Nat remarks dryly. “Rogers forgot his dentures in the lockbox, can you run and get them? He’s got bad knees, and I’m too tired after all the hard work I’ve been doing today.”

“Funny, considering I beat you in laps around the beach.”   
  
“Yeah, but I can swim faster than you and you know it.”

“Fair enough.” Steve concedes, and goes back to watching somebody’s dog jump around in the shallow waters like it’s Christmas in the hot early days of July.

Sam rounds the lifeguard chair and sits down on the sand between it and Natasha’s towel, not caring if sand is getting in his khakis. “Hey, I didn’t come all this way just to hear you two snark at one another. I crossed, like, half the beach to get here, all right? Half. The beach.”

Nat hums and flips over so that her stomach’s facing the sun, turning her head to look at Sam through her own sunglasses. “How’s Bruce treating you, by the way? I worked in the shop one summer and I did more stuff than I do now, but he’s a cool guy.”

Steve turns his head to eye the surf shop on the opposite end of the beach. There’s an orange-tanned couple walking out with matching surfboards, and through the wide window of the shop, he can see two darkened silhouettes inside. “Is he letting you on break or something?”  
  
“Nah, Tony just showed up.” Sam says. Natasha lets out a sound from deep in her chest, something like a chuckle. “Business is kind of slow today, so I’m letting them have their space. He’ll call me back if he needs me.”

“He’s not gonna call you back, Sammy.” Natasha mumbles, and Sam leans back as a gentle breeze rolls up from the water. Steve watches the blue ripples and the foam as it crawls up on to the sand. The sky’s a clear, almost artificial-blue, nothing like the normal northeastern rainclouds he’s used to.

“I’m kind of thirsty,” he says as he starts climbing down the lifeguard chair, his feet hitting the warm sand with a soft thud. “Nat, can you watch everything while I’m gone?”  
  
“Sure, I’ll stare at that puppy for you,” she says, and Sam laughs next to her. “Bring me back a daiquiri. Lifeguards get free drinks if you can sweet talk Bucky right.”  
  
“Good luck with that.” Sam mumbles, and Natasha hums affirmatively.

\--

It strikes Steve as he’s approaching the sand-beaten boards leading up to the tiki bar that he’s actually never bothered stopping by said tiki bar. He’s only ever gotten a water bottle or two when Natasha asked him if he wanted anything, but he’s never approached the best himself. To be perfectly fair, his first impression of it isn’t his favorite.

Even from a couple of feet away, all he can smell are sweet perfumes of something and that’s definitely without a doubt Pitbull blaring through the little black speakers on either side of the shack. Even so, there’s a pretty decent crowd of people sitting at the stools and mingling around with colorful drinks in hand, each adorned with a small umbrella or crazy straw or fruit kebab of some kind. He has to gently push a couple of people aside just to get to the counter.

There’s one person working. And he’s wearing sunglasses. Even though there’s plenty of shade in the shack.

“Oh, boy.” Steve says under his breath.

The guy’s young, and he’s wearing a gaudy blue and orange Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts that don’t even match, and he’s making a show of mixing some elaborate, fruity thing for a group of girls sitting at the barstools. His grin is white and toothy and Steve is bothered by the fact that he can’t see his eyes. He doesn’t really know where Stark gets these employees in the first place, but they must have pulled this guy out of a second-hand store, or an old Beach Boys album.

He’s spotted. Suddenly, he gets the oppressive urge to back away slowly.

“You’re that new lifeguard, right?” The guy asks him, holding his hand out over the countertop. “What kind of a name is Thor, anyway? You Swedish or something?”  
  
Steve takes his hand dubiously. The shake is vigorous, but luckily short, and after it’s over, he lets his arm drop to his side uselessly, flexing his hand without thinking. “Um, hi. I’m not actually Thor?” He’s not sure why it comes out as a question, or why he feels like he’s disappointing everyone in his general vicinity. “No, I’m one of the other lifeguards. I’m Steve. And for the record, I don’t think Thor is Swedish, he might take offense to that.”

“Steve.” The guy says, drawing the vowels out like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever heard. “You’re the guy those water bottles have been going to, huh? I was wondering why I hadn’t seen you around before. You shy or something?” He grins again, and the speakers crackle suddenly as the bass drops in some dubstep song. Steve is uneasy. “I’m just kidding, what can I do for you, Stevie?”  
  
“It’s just, uh. Just Steve, and, uh, can I get a water?” He rubs the back of his neck. “And one of the strawberry daiquiri things?”

Sunglasses in the Shade (which Steve has elected to calling him) concedes the nickname. “Sure thing, Just Steve, one water bottle and a strawberry daiquiri to go.” He reaches behind him to one of the tiki bar’s refrigerators, but doesn’t turn around all the way. “You should stop by when you’re not working sometime, I mix up a mean Sex on the Beach.” The girls at the bar stools giggle, and he smiles at them as if he’s some comedic king. “The customers I get here are just the sweetest, I’m sure one of them would take a liking to you.”

“You know, I might have to pass on that one.” Steve says quickly, grabbing the drinks. “How much do I owe you?” 

And just like that, something in Sunglasses in the Shade seems to falter a bit. His grin shrinks a little, and one of the girls looks over at Steve with a brief look of disapproval before turning back to her friends, but the bartender guy keeps his eyes (he thinks?) on Steve.

Steve eggs him on, quirking an eyebrow. “The drinks?”  
  
It takes Sunglasses another beat to reply, but he snaps back into it after a second. “Yeah, right.” he says, toying with the cash register for a second. When he looks back up at Steve, he brings his hand up and… well, he takes his dumb sunglasses off.

His eyes are blue. Like, really blue. The kind of icy blue Steve hasn’t seen since he lived in Brooklyn. He’s distracted by it for a second.

“You know, they’re on the house.” He says, jamming his finger into the CLEAR button on the cash register and backing up a little bit. His eyes flit down as he surveys Steve once, and then that lopsided grin returns to his face. “I’m sure Nat’s impatient for that daiquiri, so you should get it to her.”

Steve’s still a little stunned. “Uh. Okay.” He looks down at the little hula girl dancing on the bar’s counter and then looks back up. “Thanks. You actually saved me a lot of trouble, I think I left my wallet on the lifeguard stand.”

The bartender laughs, and Steve smiles a little bit, too, and maybe he doesn’t think the guys that big of a douchebag after all. “I’ll see you around, Steve. Come on back if you need any more boring water.”  
  
“I will.” Steve tells him. He’s not sure why, he hadn’t been planning on saying that, but he did. “See you.”  
  
“Bucky.” The bartender suddenly says. “You never asked for a name.”  
  
Steve shrugs. “Yeah, I knew.” Bucky laughs at that, and Steve tears himself away from the dumb little tiki bar and heads back towards the beach.

\--

Later that week, Natasha throws an old-fashioned orange soda up to Steve.

“You didn’t have to,” he says, handling the little glass bottle like it’s something very important. It’s so nice and nostalgic-looking, he barely wants to open it. He just wants to let the vibrant liquid slosh around inside, undisturbed.

“I know. I asked for water.” Natasha replies. “Bucky insisted.”  
  
Sam whistles from where he’s sitting. “Bucky likes you, dude. Bucky doesn’t like people easy, you know, but he  _likes_  you.” Natasha nudges him off of her towel and he skitters off like a crab, perching on the sand. “He still has to ask my name sometimes.”

“Quit teasing him, Sam. Let him drink his old-timey soda pop.”

“It’s not that old-timey.” Steve mumbles, but he’s smiling a bit as he cracks it open.

\--

There’s a day in the middle of July that’s sweltering and lonely for Steve. Natasha calls in sick, but mostly because she didn’t want to sit out on a beach on the hottest day of the year and is “catching up on Grey’s Anatomy in an air-conditioned apartment,” as she put it over text. The shift is boring, the weather’s unbearable, and Steve’s suddenly missing Brooklyn.

Thor’s down in the water playing with some woman’s golden retriever and Clint’s texting under the surf shop’s overhang. The beach feels empty without Natasha’s towel on the sand, and Steve still can’t get past page 43 in his book.

He notices the old lady approaching the lifeguard stand before she actually makes it, but he doesn’t rush her, just waits for her to make her way.

“Excuse me.” she says, tapping the leg of the stand very gently. “I have a beach chair that I’d like to set up, but I can’t seem to figure out how. My grandson said he’d help me, but he’s late. Do you mind giving me a hand?”  
  
It’s something to do, if anything, and Steve gladly follows the woman back to her spot on the beach. It’s a standard beach chair, and it just takes the right movement of poles and canvas to get it standing, and by the time Steve’s done, a young man comes bounding up to the old woman apologizing for his punctuality. She gives Steve a little thank you and sits down in her chair while her grandson sets up beside her, and Steve makes his way back to the lifeguard stand.

When he climbs to the top, there’s something sitting there.

 _Altruism looks good on you_ , reads the paper napkin note laying innocently on his lifeguard chair, pinned underneath a bottle of classic Coca-Cola. He picks it up and takes his seat back, but he stares at the glass bottle and the note for a minute, the condensation on the drink dripping onto his knee.

He looks up, and he doesn’t see Bucky anywhere near the stand, but he looks over to the tiki bar on the other end of the beach. He wasn’t gone for very long helping the little old lady, but sure enough, Bucky had had enough time to get to his chair and get back.

There’s a sudden eruption of applause from the tiki bar, probably just as Bucky performed some impressive drink-mixing trick.   
  
Steve looks back at the cola and thinks that it’s actually not so bad of a day, and he cracks it open with a satisfying hiss.

\--

When the beach is growing darker and the sand is cooling off, people start trickling onto the blacktop one by one as they return to their hotel rooms for the night, exhausted and chilly, wrapped up in beach towels and university sweatshirts. Steve grabs his stuff from the lifeguard stand and starts heading out with them, content with the knowledge that Thor and Clint can handle any stragglers.

He makes it to the tiki bar in time to find Bucky wiping down the countertop and putting away some very colorful bottles of alcohol. He spots Steve and immediately whips off his sunglasses, beaming at him.

“I didn’t know you spent your time helping little old ladies. You really are the all-American boy, anybody ever told you that?”

Steve just shrugs one shoulder. “I didn’t know you spent your time sprinting across beaches to bring soda to lifeguards.” he says cautiously. “In classic bottles, nonetheless, did Nat tell you that I collect these?”  
  
“Yeah, she said something about you doing a lot of sketches and you like the whole old-fashioned Americana look. Can’t get much more Americana can that, now, can you?” Bucky says, gesturing to the empty Coca-Cola bottle in Steve’s hand.

He hums and looks down at it. “Thanks for this, by the way. I didn’t expect it to be so hot out.”  
  
“I saw Clint hanging out by Bruce’s place, you should have just come and chilled with me.” Bucky tells him, and his voice sounds genuine. “I could have shown you how fast I can drink a Candy Apple through a crazy straw.”

“With the crowd around this place today, I’m surprised all you do is mix drinks and do tricks.” Steve chuckles, looking around at the little tiki bar. He’s come to like it more recently than he did when he first visited it -- the decor clearly has a good amount of thought put into it, and there’s some subtle color coordination he hadn’t noticed the first time around. The black speakers on the edges of the shack are silent for once. “I almost thought you were breathing fire or making money come out of thin air with how they were applauding.”

Bucky laughs, and he shuts the lights off (Steve didn’t even notice the dim Christmas lights wrapped in the back of the shack until they were gone) in the tiki bar, jangling a large key ring as he shuts the place up. “Trust me, if I had been doing that, they’d have been ripping me limb from limb, you would have known.” He suddenly reaches up to pull down the shack’s metal partition, and Steve feels a little cut off, but Bucky’s quick to circle around through the tiki bar’s back door. He locks everything up before turning back to Steve, and he realizes that this is the first time he’s been able to see Bucky without a counter separating them.

He’s shorter than Steve, but not by much, and he’s wearing a white V-neck today and pink shorts, because he’s just the kind of person to pull something like that. His sunglasses are pulling the neck of his shirt even lower, and his grin is mischievous. “So, you have any plans for the night, Mr. Lifeguard?”  
  
“I was gonna go back to my apartment and eat a TV dinner.” Steve says honestly, and it makes Bucky chuckle. “You have something better than that in mind?”  
  
“I know a pub nearby, if you wanna join me.” Bucky says. “Stark employees get a discount.”  
  
“How could I not take advantage of that?” Steve tells him, and Bucky’s happiness, without a doubt, looks real.

\--

They spend the hot days of July together, with Steve frequenting the bar on most days and doing drink runs for Natasha and Sam. Soon Clint and Thor throw in some orders, and occasionally, Sam will relay an order from Bruce and Tony, and on the days that his friends are being particularly needy, Steve can normally convince Bucky to help him tote everything back.

“You shouldn’t be sending this big guy on your errands.” Bucky chides Natasha with a grin, poking her with a toe as she sunbathes. “Poor Americana here suffers through so much for the power of friendship.”  
  
“Shut up, Buck,” Natasha says, waving his foot away. “Everybody knows you stare at Steve’s ass on the way back, don’t even try to deny it.”

They spend their breaks at the bar, too, sometimes just Steve, other times a ragtag of whatever lifeguards aren’t doing much on the small beach. They always make sure two people are left behind, just because they don’t want to be that irresponsible, but Steve definitely ends up at the shack more often than the others.

Sometime near the middle of August, a rumor starts circulating amongst the beachfront employees that Steve the lifeguard and the sassy-mouthed bartender are sleeping with one another. When Natasha brings it up in casual conversation, Steve leans over the side of the lifeguard chair.

“When did you hear that?” he asks her.

“Yesterday.” she says. “Clint told me. He asked me not to mention it, but whoops, I mentioned it.”

“Hm.” Steve says, leaning back in the lifeguard chair. “That’s weird.”  
  
“How so?”  
  
“Bucky and I have been sleeping with each other for three weeks, why is that just surfacing now?”  
  
Steve’s never heard Natasha laugh that loud or that long, and he doubts he’s ever going to hear it again, so he relishes in the sound of it as he watches Thor and Clint in some weird flexing competition where the water laps up to meet the sand. Sam lightly trots up to the lifeguard stand just as Nat’s laughter dies down and says, “What did I miss?”  
  
Steve’s also gotten into the habit of meeting Bucky when he closes up shop.

“Knockoff Ray-Bans was here again today. Kept trying to get me to lower the price on a margarita. It’s only seven dollars, these people probably have enough money in their Coach wallets to buy the whole world margaritas.” Bucky pours himself a plastic cup of Sprite out of the fountain before shutting the metal grate and walking through the back of the shack. “You know, it’s the simple stuff that really counts with drink mixing, can’t go wrong with Sprite.”

“I’ll have to take lessons from you sometime soon.” Steve jokes, and Bucky pulls at the drawstrings of his swimming trunks to get him to step in closer while he takes a sip of his soda.   
  
He swallows and leans up to kiss Steve quickly on the mouth. His lips are sweet, as they tend to be, and it’s a taste that he’s begun to associate with Bucky, much like the muted blues of his eyes used to be associated in Steve’s mind with Brooklyn. “How about you quit sassing me and we got out dancing?”  
  
“Dancing?” Steve asks. “Where around here can we go dancing? I know how to get to Stark’s place and my own apartment, I barely know this city.”  
  
Bucky grins and he mumbles against Steve’s lips, “Then let me show you around,” and swoops away before Steve can kiss him again. “Come on! I know this awesome club called Summertime Sickness, it’s named after that Lana del Rey song, I think, they play that song about selfies on the nightly.”

“That’s by The Chainsmokers.” Steve corrects him.

“So you do know modern culture!” Bucky laughs, turning around and walking backwards through the blacktop back of Stark’s hotel, and Steve jogs to catch up with him, slinging an arm around around his waist. 

“I’ll take you out dancing if you stay over my place again tonight.” Steve offers.

“I would have been insulted had you not offered.” Bucky responds, and leans up to kiss him one more time before they both disappear into the darkness of the bustling night life.


End file.
